Today, with great trepidation, let us take up the forbidden topic of weeding out the riff-raff among us, the undesirables, the trash.

This is a topic that’s not supposed to be discussed in polite society these days. Especially not after the example of the Third Reich.

Discomforting question: Does the quest to rid ourselves of the...um...“socially unfit” go on today under the Orwellian rubric of “reproductive rights”?

Nobody’s admitting to it today.

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But Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), venerated founder of Planned Parenthood, was more forthright, even blunt, about the quest when she took it up in the early 1900s. Society, she said, must align with “the fit against the unfit” — by curbing births among the latter.

This pioneer advocate of birth control was not only, or primarily, concerned about unwanted, problematical pregnancies. She was concerned — obsessed with, you might say — “weeding out” those she labelled (her words) “the socially unfit.”

To give Sanger her due, her efforts were seminal in recognizing and advancing rights and opportunities for women. Were it not for her efforts, America might resemble such repressive, backward jurisdictions as Saudi Arabia.

But Sanger’s driving mission was, as she said herself, “to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit.”

This quest became known as “eugenics” — the supposed “science” of upgrading “the human stock” through policies of controlled, selective breeding.

Eugenics became quite the fashionable rage among the progressive milieu.

Among those signing on to it were such heavy-weight literati as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw; political luminaries like Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill; top-notch universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins, and influential organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association and the National Research Council.

(The late best-selling author Michael Crichton, a Harvard Medical School MD, likened the eugenics craze to today’s faddish political hysteria over global warming.)

As Sanger crusaded on and on against the proliferation of “mental and moral degenerates” (her words again), she attracted attention in, not surprisingly, the politically turbulent Germany of the pre-World War II era. And how could she not have attracted attention?

Speaking against unregulated human birth, she noted that even in “animal husbandry, the poor stock is not allowed to breed.”

“In gardens, weeds are kept down,” she added.

A Sanger publication explained her eugenics obsession in these words: “More children from the fit; less children from the unfit — that is the issue of birth control.”

One of her publications in 1933 ran an article by Ernst Ruder, German sterilization fanatic and mentor of the Nazi death camp’s notorious Dr. Josef Mengele.

Sanger addressed a women’s auxiliary group of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey — again not surprising, given her effort to promote the “volunteer” sterilization of blacks, via her “Negro Project.” (A chapter of Dinesh D’Souza’s provocative book, “The Big Lie,” includes a fascinating account of the underbelly of Sanger’s odiferous oeuvre.)

The occasional progressive once sounded off against the legacy of this harping Sanger theme. Rev. Jesse Jackson, for one.

Never given to understatement, he denounced abortion as “black genocide” in 1973, in 1977, in 1980. For whatever reason, he lately has fallen mum on the subject.

Nowadays, you won’t hear any of Planned Parenthood’s unsavory eugenics history acknowledged on the leftward end of the political spectrum. And definitely not by Planned Parenthood itself, which gives out an annual Margaret Sanger Award with much attendant, celebratory hoo-ha. Hailed recipients have included Jane Fonda, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.

No recipient of the Sanger award has ever stood at the dais and declared herself or himself honored to have helped carry on Sanger’s quest to winnow out — in her own words once more — “the dead weight of human waste.”

No award recipient ever declared herself or himself honored to have helped minimize the birth of (Sanger’s words again) “the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good.”

This part of the Sanger legacy is glossed over, if not flatly suppressed. And that’s an astounding development, given the hair-trigger, flared-nostrils, up-in-arms, high-dudgeon indignation of today’s progressive cohort to perceived slights of minorities and the poor — or to any hint of even a remote connection to “right-wing extremists.”

To focus on the dark crevices of Planned Parenthood’s legacy is not, necessarily, to take a stand one way or another on the “pro-choice” vs “pro-life” controversy. Or to dispute the beneficial services Planned Parenthood provides, apart from abortions.

The point of focusing on these dark crevices is, rather, to insist that unpleasant, potentially insidious realities be acknowledged and pondered. And all the more so because they are unpleasant and potentially insidious, to say the least.

Although progressive circles are keenly sensitive to “racial disparities” and are quick to yap about them, the unseemly racial disparities of abortion are an all but verboten topic in those precincts.

Abortion rates for black females range by age group from three to five times higher than the rates among white females. Black Lives Matter doesn’t seem disposed to make much of a fuss over it, but those rates may be the mother of all racial-disparity statistics.

This disparity, however, has absolutely nothing to do with “eugenics,” right? Absolutely nothing to do with weeding out the “good-for-nothing,” the “unfit,” the “human waste,” right?

Don’t be too sure about it.

In 2005, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner cranked out their huge bestseller “Freakonomics,” and the part of it still cited today is its finding that legalized abortion played a major role — if not the key role — in curbing the crime rate. Contemplate that.

Here you have a tempting defense of abortion that many stop just short of voicing out loud. Here you have the topic of eugenics topped off with a conspicuous racial angle.

Yet you’ll never hear this aspect of the topic mentioned, much less discussed, at a Margaret Sanger Awards banquet. Or in Planned Parenthood fund-raising letters. Or in Planned Parenthood’s annual requests for federal appropriations.

Certainly ill-timed or unwanted pregnancies, or “illegitimate” births, or births to females who aren’t emotionally or economically capable of providing for offspring, all add up to potential social dysfunctions of enormous consequence. That’s something certainly worthy of consideration.

But, isn’t there something more to ponder here than just that?

Dave Neese grew up on a Midwest farm, received a degree in Slavic Studies (Russian lit), Indiana U., did stints in the U.S. Army and in various news and other jobs from New Hampshire to California. At The Trentonian he covered the Statehouse and was editorial page editor. He won N.J. Press Association awards in numerous categories. Email: davidneese@verizon.net